SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition by describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, and her books feature often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

Irish author ABBY GREEN ended a very glamorous career in film and TV—which really consisted of a lot of standing in the rain outside actors’ trailers—to pursue her love of romance. After she’d bombarded Mills & Boon with manuscripts they kindly accepted one, and an author was born. She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and loves any excuse for distraction. Visit abby-green.com or email abbygreenauthor@gmail.com.

Also by Sharon Kendrick

A Royal Vow of Convenience

Secrets of a Billionaire’s Mistress

The Sheikh’s Bought Wife

The Pregnant Kavakos Bride

The Italian’s Christmas Secret

Bound to the Sicilian’s Bed

Crowned for the Sheikh’s Baby

The Greek’s Bought Bride

The Italian’s Christmas Housekeeper

The Sheikh’s Secret Baby

The Legendary Argentinian Billionaires miniseries

Bought Bride for the Argentinian

The Argentinian’s Baby of Scandal

Also by Abby Green

Awakened by Her Desert Captor

An Heir to Make a Marriage

Claimed for the De Carrillo Twins

The Virgin’s Debt to Pay

Claiming His Wedding Night Consequence

An Innocent, A Seduction, A Secret

Awakened by the Scarred Italian

Brides for Billionaires collection

Married for the Tycoon’s Empire

Rulers of the Desert miniseries

A Diamond for the Sheikh’s Mistress

A Christmas Bride for the King

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

His Contract Christmas Bride

Sharon Kendrick

Confessions of a Pregnant Cinderella

Abby Green

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08843-5

HIS CONTRACT CHRISTMAS BRIDE & CONFESSIONS OF A PREGNANT CINDERELLA

His Contract Christmas Bride © 2019 Sharon Kendrick Confessions of a Pregnant Cinderella © 2019 Abby Green

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

His Contract Christmas Bride

Back Cover Text

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Confessions of a Pregnant Cinderella

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

His Contract Christmas Bride

Sharon Kendrick

A deal before the altar

A desire unlocked by the Greek!

As new guardian to his orphaned nephew, CEO Drakon must marry. And caring Lucy is the ideal choice. His terms include a lavish Christmas wedding and nights of tantalizing pleasure. But that’s all emotionally guarded Drakon can offer!

Lucy cannot believe Drakon is proposing a marriage of convenience—their all-consuming island fling left her heartbroken! But Lucy’s adamant his nephew won’t grow up without a mother. And soon she realises she can’t be just a wife in name only. Dare she hope Drakon could give anything more...?

This is for the magnificent Joan Bolland,

whose wisdom and wry sense of humour

are greatly appreciated. Xxx

PROLOGUE

DRAKON KONSTANTINOU LOOKED around him, unable to hide the disgust which swamped his body like a dank, dark tide. But hot on the heels of disgust came regret, and then guilt. Regret that he couldn’t have done something sooner and guilt that he couldn’t have prevented this terrible outcome.

But the trigger to these grisly events had been pulled a long time ago and he couldn’t control everything, no matter how much he had spent his whole life trying to do just that. Sometimes control just slipped beyond your grasp and there was nothing you could do about it. His brother had gone now and so had the woman he’d married—the sordid paraphernalia strewn around the room the last testimony to their degenerate lifestyle.

But life went on.

Life had to go on.

As if to confirm that indisputable fact, he heard an unfamiliar cry coming from an adjoining room, quickly followed by a voice and the sound of footsteps.

‘Drakon?’

He glanced up at his business partner’s face as she walked in from the adjoining room. Gingerly, she walked towards him, clearly uncomfortable as she carried her precious cargo—as if unsure just what to do next. Join the club, thought Drakon grimly.

‘Are you ready, Drakon?’ she asked.

He wanted to shake his head. To tell her he wasn’t prepared for this latest responsibility which had come slamming at him like a weighted curve ball. To protest that he’d done enough of shouldering other people’s burdens and their problems and he needed a break. But that was impossible. He could do this. He would do this. He just hadn’t quite worked out how.

He needed a woman, that was for sure, but a quick flick through his memory bank of females who would be willing to do pretty much anything he asked of them failed to come up with anyone remotely suitable.

And then, as if in answer to the turmoil of his thoughts, a face unexpectedly swam into his mind. A face with soft blue eyes the colour of the bluebells which had grown beneath the trees in those long-ago English springs, in the heady days before he’d discovered how much his father liked hookers.

Forcing his mind back to the present, he thought about the face again. Not a beautiful face but a kindly one. He felt a faint beat of remembered desire, but far stronger still was his sudden sense of purpose as he allowed his mind to linger on Lucy Phillips for the first time in many months and his eyes narrowed speculatively. Maybe fate was cleverer than he’d imagined. Maybe the answer had been staring him in the face all this time.

‘Neh,’ he said, his harsh Greek accent echoing around the marble-floored villa. ‘I’m ready.’

CHAPTER ONE

AT FIRST SHE didn’t recognise him, which was pretty amazing when she stopped to think about it. Except that Lucy had done her best not to think about it. Or him. She’d tried to blot Drakon Konstantinou from her mind, the way you did when you were on a diet and didn’t want to focus on cream cake, or chocolate, or toasted teacakes swimming with melted butter.

Because only an idiot would want to remember the man who had introduced them to pleasure then walked away so fast his feet had barely touched the ground. Or to recall her own participation in what could only ever have been an impossible fantasy.

But it was him. Lucy’s heart slammed against her ribcage as she opened the front door of her tiny cottage and peered out through the protective chain at the figure standing on the step, silhouetted darkly against the fiery orange of the winter sunset. It was definitely him. And the first thing she thought was how different he seemed from the man who had seduced her on the beautiful Greek island of Prasinisos, an island which he actually owned.

It wasn’t just that his features were ravaged and his shoulders hunched, as if a heavy weight were pressing down on their muscular breadth, but his black hair was longer, too. Instead of being neatly clipped to follow the shape of his head, ebony waves were kissing the collar of his dark overcoat and there was a dark layer of stubble at his angled jaw. His appearance hinted more at recent neglect rather than his usual pristine perfection and it was an astonishing transformation. Suddenly Drakon Konstantinou bore more resemblance to a rock singer who’d spent the night on the tiles, rather than a powerful oil baron and shipping magnate, with the world at his fingertips.

Unwanted feelings flooded through her body and started making her skin feel as raw as if someone had been attacking it with a cheese grater. She told herself she shouldn’t be so sensitive. Wasn’t that what her former colleagues at the hospital used to tease her about? But sensitivity wasn’t something you could just turn on and off, like a tap. Her memories of Drakon were mixed and...complex...and the overriding feeling she’d been left with when he’d walked away was that it would be better if she never saw him again. Better for her, certainly. Better to forget those three blissful days and nights which she suspected had ruined her for all other men. To try to get back into the groove of a life which had seemed very dull after her brief glimpse into his world.

But he was here now. Standing in front of her with all that dark, brooding power and she could hardly ignore him. She couldn’t really shut the door in his face and tell him she was busy—something which her scruffy jeans and swimming club sweatshirt suggested was untrue. Because that would run the risk of making her look vulnerable and that was something she wasn’t prepared to do. Okay, so he had taken her virginity. No, Lucy corrected herself sternly. She had given him her virginity—with an eagerness which had taken her completely by surprise. And him, if the look on his face had been anything to go by when he’d thrust deep into her body, while, outside, the inky waters of the Mediterranean had gleamed silver in the moonlight.

Just because they’d shared a passionate few days together and it had fizzled out like a spent firework didn’t mean they should now be enemies. Or was she deluded enough to have expected that the amazing sex they’d shared would end in some sort of relationship, when they came from completely different worlds?

And yet...

She cleared her throat, trying to quell the foolish hope which was spiralling up inside her, knowing how foolishly persistent hope could be. False hope could raise you up and then dash you down again, making the pain even more intense than it had been before. And she was done with pain for the time being. Hadn’t she been given more than her fair share of it during her twenty-eight years?

So she forced as wide a smile as she could manage and when she spoke, her breath rushed from her mouth like billowing smoke as it hit the cold winter air. ‘Drakon,’ she said. ‘This is...unexpected.’

He shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘Maybe I should have rung first.’

He said it as if he didn’t really mean it. As if any woman should be falling over herself with gratitude that the famous Greek billionaire had deigned to pay her an unexpected call. She wasn’t really feeling it but Lucy attempted indignation. ‘Yes, you should. You were lucky I was in.’

Dark eyebrows were raised. ‘Oh?’

And despite everything, she found herself offering an explanation. As if she needed to prove herself to a man who hadn’t even cared enough about her to lift up the phone and check she was okay after their long weekend together. She began to talk. ‘Because this is a busy time of year in the catering industry. There are a lot of pre-holiday functions coming up and normally I would be working. In case you don’t remember I work for Caro’s Canapés and people eat more canapés at Christmas than at any other time of the year.’

‘Of course. Christmas.’ Drakon tensed as he said it, knowing he needed to choose his words with care—not a normal occurrence for him, since people always hung onto whatever he had to say with an eagerness which sometimes repulsed him. Like many powerful men he demanded servility while secretly despising it, but Lucy was different. She had always been different. Wasn’t that one of the reasons he was here today? There were countless women who would have bitten his hand off to accept what he was about to offer—but only Lucy would understand the truth.

Only Lucy would accept the limitations of what he was about to ask her.

But first he needed to gain entry into her mini-fortress of a cottage. He fixed his gaze on the chain which was still stretched tautly across the door and wondered why she hadn’t released it.

‘Can I come in?’ he questioned.

There was a pause. Not long enough to be insulting, but a pause nonetheless and he noted it with surprise and a faint flicker of irritation he knew to be unreasonable.

‘I suppose so,’ she said at last.

He watched her fiddle with the chain before pulling the door open and stepping back to let him in. He noted that she was keeping her distance but maybe he couldn’t blame her for that. He hadn’t behaved particularly well after that surprisingly erotic encounter which had taken place back in the summer and afterwards he’d cursed himself for allowing it to happen in the first place. He couldn’t understand why he’d behaved in a way which had been so uncharacteristic, because usually he chose his lovers as carefully as he chose his cars—and normally someone like Lucy Phillips wouldn’t have even made the cut.

He hadn’t rung her or asked to see her again, because what was the point of meaningless phone calls which might have left her fabricating unfulfillable dreams about the future? She was way too unworldly to spend any time with a hard-hearted bastard like him. Not for the first time he found himself wondering what had possessed him to invite someone he’d known from his schooldays to his Greek island home, though deep down he knew why. It hadn’t been because of the way she had looked at him with those soft blue eyes, nor the way she had blushed when she’d seen him again after so many years. It hadn’t even been about her somewhat old-fashioned attitude, which had been obvious in pretty much everything about her—from the way she wore her hair to the polite way she’d tried to refuse his offer of a lift home after the reunion, saying it would take him miles out of his way—an attitude which had undoubtedly charmed him.

He’d done it because he’d felt sorry for her because she was hard-working and poor and had been through a tough time. And yet, against all the odds, he had seduced her, even though she was nothing like his usual choice of bed partner. He was not and never had been a player, for reasons which were rooted deeply in his past. In fact, if anything, he’d been described as not just formidable but indifferent to the charms of women. He was not indifferent, of course. Far from it. He loved sex as much as any red-blooded man but it took more than physical attraction to engage his interest. Throughout his life he’d been able to have his pick of any woman he wanted, but he was much too fastidious for that. When he did engage in a relationship, he liked women who were experienced. Sexual equals who were willing to experiment. Intelligent women more focussed on their career than on the idea of marriage, who treated sex like an enjoyable form of exercise. Not someone soft and gentle and full of wonder, like Lucy Phillips.

As she closed the door on the freezing winter afternoon, he was able to study her. Nobody in the world could ever have described her as pretty, although her soft brown hair was shiny and her skin was clear, and she had a way of looking at you with that misty blue gaze which was more than a little unsettling...

He narrowed his eyes. And, yes, she had a body made firm by youth and exercise but the grey jeans she was wearing did her curvy derrière no favours. Neither did her sweatshirt, which was scarlet and had the insignia of a dolphin embroidered just below one shoulder and disguised the luscious curve of breasts he knew lay beneath. Suddenly he couldn’t hold back the flashback memory of her nipples—rose-tipped and tasting of coconut sunscreen—which had been positioned so tantalisingly beneath his questing lips as he had licked them into cresting peaks. He felt the hard rush of blood to his groin and thought just how much he would like to lose himself in her again.

Until a rush of shame made him wonder why the hell he was thinking about sex at a time like this.

Ever-present guilt washed over him and Drakon shook his head to clear it. Focus, he told himself fiercely. Focus. Think about the reason you’re here. The only reason you’re here. He looked around, realising that the cramped dimensions and obvious lack of investment in the property she had inherited from her mother was playing right into his hands. But before he put his proposition to her, he had to get her to relax and to lose that tight look from her face. Which wasn’t going to be easy, judging from the way she was staring at him as warily as if a snake had just wriggled its way from the nearby riverbank into her tiny sitting room.

Stepping over the row of shoes lined up neatly beside the front door, he glanced around, at a jug of holly on a table and the way the scarlet berries echoed the colourful flash of cushions which were scattered along the sofa. A flickering fire was burning in the grate—scenting the small room with applewood. Everything was polished and shining and all the contents of the room seemed old and lovingly preserved. In pride of place on the wall were two photographs of different men, both in uniform, and Drakon felt a clench of pain and an unwanted sense of identification. But he forced himself to concentrate on the positive. On the future, not the past. Because that was what was important, he reminded himself fiercely. The only thing which was important.

‘Nice place,’ he commented, making the kind of benign social observation which wasn’t usually part of his vocabulary.

Her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously, as if she didn’t believe him. As if he was secretly making fun of her by comparing this matchbox of a dwelling to the sprawling square footage of his many homes. But he did mean it. He’d never been inside this riverside cottage before but he’d passed it often enough when he was rowing for the prestigious English boarding school he’d attended, where Lucy’s mother had been matron. The little house used to symbolise home for all the boys who were so far away from their own. He remembered seeing fairy lights in the window and a wreath on the door every Christmas. He remembered hearing laughter coming through an open door in the lush months of summer when the green reeds grew tall and the riverbank was bosky. But there was no Christmas wreath today, he noted.

‘It suits my needs perfectly,’ she said, rather primly.

Her words sounded defensive and Drakon found himself staring at her left hand, registering each ringless finger before lifting his gaze to her eyes. It was unlikely that her situation had changed since the summer but you never knew... ‘You live here alone?’

A faint frown appeared on her brow. ‘I do.’

‘So...there’s no man in your life?’

Hot colour rushed into her cheeks. ‘I believe that’s what’s known as a rather impertinent question.’

‘Is there?’ he persisted.

Her blush deepened. ‘No. Actually, there isn’t. Not that it’s any of your business,’ she said crossly, before fixing him with an enquiring look. ‘Look, what can I do for you, Drakon? You turn up without any kind of warning and then start interrogating me about my personal life, yet I’ve heard nothing from you for months. Forgive me if I’m confused. Is this just a random visit?’

Drakon shook his head. He had planned how he was going to present this. To somehow build it up and carefully cushion the impact. To make it sound as if it was just part of life and he was dealing with it. He hadn’t been expecting to just come out and say it—or for the words to taste like bitter poison when he spoke them.

‘No. This wasn’t a chance visit. I intended to come here today. It’s Niko,’ he grated. ‘He’s dead.’

Lucy blinked in confusion for his words made no sense. Because Niko was Drakon’s twin brother. The wilder version of Drakon. Niko was the unpredictable twin—always had been. The volatile twin. The one who made headlines for all the wrong reasons and had almost been expelled from school an unbelievable three times. But although Niko was reckless he was also full of life. Why, she remembered him as the kind of man who was positively bursting with life.

‘What are you talking about?’ she said and afterwards wondered how she could have asked such a naïve question, in view of her own experience. ‘How can he possibly be dead?’

Drakon’s face contorted with darkness and pain and that was when she knew he was speaking the truth.

‘He died of a drug overdose,’ he bit out. ‘Last month.’

Lucy gasped, her fingertips flying to her lips, her heart crashing wildly against her ribcage as she wondered how she could have been so stupid. Didn’t she of all people know that young lives could be cut down like a blade of grass being sliced by a tractor at harvest time? Had she thought Drakon Konstantinou was immune to pain and loss, just because he was one of the world’s richest men and was always flying around the globe on his private jet, brokering deals to add even more dollars to his already massive fortune?

She wanted to rush over to him. To fling her arms around his tense body and comfort him, as she had comforted innumerable grieving relatives on hospital wards in the past. But that was the trouble with sex. It changed things. You could never touch a former lover and pretend it was impartial, even if it was. ‘Oh, Drakon,’ she said, in a low voice, and could see from his blanched features and haunted eyes that he was in deep shock. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Please. Won’t you sit down? Let me get you something.’ She looked around rather distractedly, trying to remember what was in the ancient drinks cabinet. ‘I think I have some whisky somewhere—’

‘I don’t want whisky,’ he said harshly.

She nodded. ‘Okay. Then I’ll make you some tea. Strong tea with lots of sugar. That’s what you need.’

To her surprise he didn’t object, just sank into one of the fireside armchairs, which looked too flimsy to be able to deal with his powerful frame, and Lucy sped into the kitchen, glad to have something to occupy herself with. Something to distract herself from her racing thoughts. But her hands were shaking so much that the china was chinking madly as she pulled cups and saucers down from one of the cupboards.

Sucking in a deep breath, she waited for the kettle to boil, wondering why she hadn’t realised right from the beginning that something was wrong. Hadn’t she been taught to read the telltale signs of body language which might have suggested that here was a man mourning the loss of his only sibling? While instead she had been selfishly preoccupied with her own battered ego, reflecting on the fact that he’d dumped her after a long weekend of wild and totally unexpected sex. What did something like that matter in the light of what he’d just told her?

She made the tea and frowned as she picked up the tray, because a nagging question still remained.

Why had he told her?

Slowly she went back into the tiny sitting room, her head still full of confusion. He turned to look at her and suddenly Lucy was scared by the expression on his rugged features. By the stony look which made his black eyes look so hard and bleak and cold—eyes which said quite clearly you can’t get close to me. Scared too by another instinctive urge to run over and hug him, wondering if she was using his heartache as an excuse to touch him again. Because hadn’t she yearned to stroke his silken flesh ever since he’d set her body on fire and made her realise what physical pleasure really meant?

She poured tea, dropping four sugar cubes into his cup and giving it a quick stir, before placing it on a small table beside the fire. Then she sat down in a chair opposite him, her knees pressed tightly together. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she questioned softly. ‘About what happened to Niko?’

Talking about it was the last thing Drakon wanted, but if he was to get Lucy to agree to his demands it was unavoidable. And how hard could it be to do that? He was a master of negotiation in the business world—surely he was able to employ the same tools of demand, cooperation and compromise in his personal life if he were to achieve what it was he wanted.

‘How much do you know about my brother?’ he questioned.

She hesitated, shrugging her shoulders a little awkwardly. ‘Not a lot. Once he left school he seemed to disappear off the radar.’

‘Neh. That’s a good way to describe what happened. He disappeared off the radar.’ Drakon’s voice grew distant and sounded as if it were coming from a long way off. But it was, he realised, with a jolt. It was coming from the past—and didn’t they say that the past was like a different country? The Konstantinou twins, two black-eyed little boys, pampered like princes by a battery of servants yet overlooked by the wealthy parents who had employed those servants. They shared almost identical DNA and, for many years, few people could tell them apart, until they heard them speak. So similar in looks and yet so different in character. Sometimes they’d even been able to trick their own parents—but then, they’d lived such separate lives from their mother and father maybe that wasn’t so surprising.

‘Niko was the older of us—by just one and a half minutes—but those vital ninety seconds were all that were needed for him to be in line to inherit the family business. He thought he was going to be a very wealthy man—until the will was read and he discovered there was nothing left. All the money had gone.’

‘How come?’

Drakon stared at her. Her bluebell eyes were a compassionate blur and for a moment he almost confided in her, until he drew himself short, reminding himself that certain segments of the past were irrelevant. He’d come here to talk about the future. ‘The reasons don’t matter,’ he said, the words acrid on his lips. ‘What is relevant is the way Niko coped with finding out the news, and the way he coped with it was with drugs. First it was a puff or two of dope at a party and then he started snorting cocaine, like so many of his buddies. But sooner or later, every addiction needs an additional boost because it isn’t working any more.’ His face twisted. ‘And that’s when he started on heroin.’

She didn’t say anything. Had he expected her to? Had he secretly wanted her to come out with something trite and predictable so he could lash out as he had been wanting to lash out at someone for days now? He felt his jaw tighten as he continued with his story and yet somehow it was an unspeakable relief to unburden himself, because he hadn’t really talked about this with anyone. Not even Amy. He hadn’t dared. Had he been afraid that describing his twin’s fatal weakness might somehow reflect poorly on him? Might hold up a mirror to the cold darkness in his own soul and the guilt which gnawed away at him because he hadn’t been there for his brother when he’d most needed him?

‘I didn’t find this out until afterwards,’ he ground out. ‘Because he left Greece and kept his distance from me—from everyone, really—and resisted every attempt I made to meet up. I only realised afterwards that he wanted to hide the true extent of his drug habit from me. If I’d known I might have been able to do something, but I didn’t know. I guess I was too busy trying to make my fortune. Trying to recover something of the Konstantinou name and reputation.’ He sighed. ‘But eventually, I heard that Niko was living in Goa and was in a steady relationship and I can remember thinking that maybe things might be different. Personally, I’ve never believed in the transformative power of love—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t hopeful it might work for Niko.’ His mouth twisted cynically and there was a pause. ‘Apparently they had a beachside wedding and then I heard that she’d had a baby.’

‘B-baby?’ she echoed.

Drakon saw the colour drain from her face but still he didn’t say it. It was as if he needed to mould the facts into some sort of recognisable structure before he hit her with the big one. Was he hoping to build up an element of sympathy, so she would find it impossible to say no to him? ‘He got in touch with me just after the birth, to tell me I was now an uncle. He...he asked me if I wanted to go and meet Xander for myself and I told him I would. So I scheduled in a trip to go and see them the following week and was hopeful that the birth of a healthy child might bring him the kind of fulfilment he’d been unable to find elsewhere. Maybe it would have done if he and his wife hadn’t decided to celebrate in their own time-honoured way. Not with a bottle of champagne or a candlelit dinner, but a lethal cocktail of narcotics.’

Her face blanched even more. ‘Oh, no.’

‘Oh, neh,’ he agreed grimly. ‘My partner was on a business trip nearby and some instinct made me ask her to check on them unannounced.’ He paused, suddenly finding the words very difficult to say. ‘Their bodies were still warm by the time she got there. I got a local investigator to find out what he could, and a little searching revealed that Niko’s wife was as hooked on illegal substances as he was.’

‘Oh, Drakon. I’m so sorry.’

He shook his head. ‘We spoke to the doula who’d been attending her throughout the pregnancy and the only thing I’m grateful for is that she must have retained some vestige of common sense, and was able to give up drugs for the whole nine months.’

She flinched, the words spilling urgently from her mouth. ‘And the baby?’ she demanded. ‘What about the baby?’

‘Is unharmed,’ he supplied grimly. ‘The life force is powerful. He is lusty and strong and with his Greek nanny now—safe and warm not far from here, in London.’ He felt his mouth twist, as if recounting words he didn’t particularly want to say. ‘You see, Niko and his wife had named me as the child’s official guardian and so he is living with me.’

She leaned forward, clasping her hands together as if in prayer, an expression of earnestness on her face. But he could see indecision there, too, and she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. ‘This is a heartbreaking story, Drakon—and I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she breathed. ‘But I’m still not quite sure why you’re telling me all this.’

He stared at her. Was she really so naïve? Maybe she was. She’d certainly been innocent when he’d parted her thighs that hot summer evening and slid inside the unexpected tightness of her body. Though maybe he’d been the naïve one not to have realised that the wholesome Lucy Phillips had been untouched by another man. When he’d bumped into her in England she’d appeared almost invisible and the thought of seducing her couldn’t have been further from his mind. And yet things had inexplicably turned sexual when he’d dropped in on her when she’d been staying on his island.

He remembered seeing her swimming in his pool, her strong arms arcing through the turquoise water in a graceful display of strength and power. Length after length he had watched her swim and when she’d eventually surfaced and blinked droplets of water from her eyes, she had looked genuinely surprised—and pleased—to see him. He shouldn’t have been turned on by her plain and practical swimsuit but he had been, though maybe because he’d never seen someone of her age wearing something so old-fashioned. Just as he shouldn’t have been unexpectedly charmed by the way she made him laugh—which was rare enough to be noteworthy. He’d found himself staying on for dinner, even though he hadn’t planned to—and even though he’d told himself that her dress was cheap, that hadn’t stopped him from being unable to tear his eyes away from the way the dark material had clung to her fleshy curves, had it?

Maybe it was inevitable that they had started kissing—and just as inevitable that they’d ended up having sex. The unexpected and unwanted factor had been encountering her intact hymen and realising he was the first man she’d ever been intimate with. At the time he’d been irritated by the fact she hadn’t told him because, according to friends who knew about such things, taking a woman’s virginity brought with it all kinds of problems—not least the kind of mindless devotion which was the last thing he needed. In fact, he despised it, for reasons which still made him shudder. His mouth hardened. He had enough difficulty keeping women at arm’s length as it was, without some idealistic innocent longing for rose petals and wedding bells.

But his irritation had lasted no longer than it took to resume his powerful rhythm inside her. And she had surprised him. Not just because she had proved to be an energetic and enthusiastic lover who had kissed more sweetly than any other woman he’d ever known. No. Because she seemed to have realised herself the limitations of their brief affair and to have accepted the fact that he had ghosted her from his life afterwards. She hadn’t made any awkward phone calls or sent texts carefully constructed in order to appear ‘casual’. And if his abundantly healthy ego had been fleetingly dented by her apparent eagerness to put what had happened behind her, the feeling had soon left him, because it was entirely mutual. But it made him realise that in many ways Lucy Phillips was exceptional. Emotionally independent, a trained midwife and, thus, the perfect candidate for what he needed...

He felt his mouth dry as he studied her earnest face and the clothes which failed to flatter her curvy shape. It was hard now to believe that she had choked out her fulfilment as he had driven into her firm body or to imagine the way he had fingered her nipples in the blazing Greek sunshine so that they had puckered into tight little nubs just ripe for sucking. But when you stopped to think about it, all of this was hard to believe and he needed to present his case so that she would receive it sympathetically. Rising to his feet, he addressed her stumbled question as he slowly approached her fireside chair. ‘I’m telling you because I need your help, Lucy.’

‘My help?’ she echoed, her bright eyes looking up at him in surprise as his shadow enveloped her in darkness. ‘Are you kidding? How on earth can I help someone like you when you’re one of the richest men in the world and I have practically nothing?’

‘No, I’m not kidding,’ he negated firmly. ‘And, far from having nothing, you have something I need very badly. Niko’s baby needs security and continuity. He needs a home and I’m in a position to offer him one. But not on my own. Not as a single man whose work takes him to opposite sides of the world and who has no experience of babies, or children. And that’s why I’m asking you to marry me, Lucy. To be my wife and the mother of my orphaned nephew.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUCY’S MOUTH FELL open as she stared into the face of the powerful Greek billionaire, the flickering firelight illuminating the ebony and gold of his rugged features. She couldn’t believe what Drakon had just asked her and his question made her feel as if she was taking part in a dream. An extra-surreal dream. But surely he wouldn’t be looking so serious if he hadn’t meant it. ‘You want me to marry you?’ she verified slowly.

He nodded—though his brief frown suggested he didn’t quite agree with her choice of words. ‘I do.’

Lucy shook her hair and her heavy ponytail slithered like a thick rope against her back. Wasn’t it crazy—and sad—how, in life, timing was everything? If her brother hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would still be here. And if Drakon Konstantinou had asked her this very question a few months earlier, her reaction to it would have been totally different. Because when she’d returned home after her brief excursion to his island home—high on a mixture of raging hormones and a heady introduction to multiple orgasms—she had prayed for a scenario just like this. She’d nursed the unrealistic fantasy that what she and Drakon had shared had been special. Super-special. She had longed for him to suddenly decide his life was empty without her and that he wanted them to make a go of things. Why wouldn’t she, when he was like every woman’s dream man—despite his undeniable arrogance and detachment? When she’d always had a secret crush on him...

Of course that had never happened. He had cut her out of his life as abruptly as he had blazed into it again—at a school reunion where she’d been employed by Caro’s Canapés, the local catering firm for which she worked. In her plain green dress, she’d been serving sandwiches just before the pin-drop silence which had followed Drakon Konstantinou’s entrance into Milton school’s famous and historic hall. She remembered the way all the other men had consciously or unconsciously pulled back their shoulders and sucked in their stomachs, as if to big themselves up or look taller. But it had been to no avail because the Greek tycoon had still dominated the vast room without even trying. Like a black star, dark brilliance had radiated from his powerful body and drawn every single eye to him. Yet for some crazy and inexplicable reason, he had been looking at her.

Lucy remembered blushing deeply as she’d offered him an egg and cress sandwich because she’d been acutely aware of the time, years ago, when he’d gashed his leg while rowing for the first team and, eager to be a nurse herself, she had been helping her mother, the school matron, in the school sanatorium. Drakon had been lying on a narrow trolley, with blood seeping from his gaping wound, and Lucy had thought how much it must hurt as her mother had dabbed at it with antiseptic. But he hadn’t shown it. He hadn’t even winced, not once. She’d given him her fingers to grip and he had opened his eyes and stared at her. Stared at her with eyes as black as the night. A ripple of something unfamiliar and exciting had whispered its way down her spine and she had never forgotten that feeling. She had been only fourteen at the time, and Drakon a crucial three years older—it had been Lucy’s first experience of physical attraction towards a member of the opposite sex and it had stayed with her, all those years. Why, it had fired straight back into life when she had extended the silver platter of sandwiches towards him and met the velvety blackness of his eyes.

Was it her corresponding blush which had amused him—which had deepened when he’d pointed out, in his drawling Greek accent, that it was a rare thing to see a woman blush these days? Or was it simply curiosity which had made him hang around as the reunion was coming to an end, and the headmaster was imploring him to join him and his wife for supper? But Drakon hadn’t stayed. Amid a torrent of thundering rain, he had insisted on giving her a lift home in his fancy car and naturally Lucy had been tongue-tied by all that opulence.

It had been pretty scary to discover that her crush on him was as powerful as ever, and slightly unsettling that she couldn’t seem to keep her gaze from straying to the muscular thrust of his thighs. She remembered the potent rush of warmth deep at her core, which had made her feel both excited and a little bit embarrassed, because she wasn’t the type of person who usually thought about stuff like that. She never really came across eligible men and certainly nobody of Drakon’s calibre ever entered her life. Even the ones who were more her type tended to glance over her shoulder whilst chatting at parties, as if searching the room for someone more interesting to talk to.

Yet after the reunion, when the throaty car had slid to a halt outside her tiny riverside cottage, Drakon had turned to her and said, ‘So how are you, Lucy? I mean, really?’

Was it the sense of what had sounded like genuine interest—something she suspected was rare for a man like him—which had made her blurt out everything which had been on her mind? Well, not everything. She’d missed out the part which explained why she’d given up her beloved job in midwifery—because the reasons for that made her feel even less of a woman, and who in their right mind would wish to do that in the presence of such a gorgeous man? Instead Lucy had found herself telling him about her brother in the army, who had lost his life in that awful conflict, just as her father had done in a different war before that. And how afterwards her mother had seemed to lose the will to live and had just faded away—like one of those dusky pink roses which bloomed in the lavish walled gardens of Milton school.

She remembered the deep frown which had crossed the tycoon’s face as he’d studied her admittedly pale skin and told her that what she needed was a holiday in the sun. Had she explained that such luxuries were far beyond her grasp on her wages as a waitress, or had he just guessed? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that he had extended a careless invitation for her to holiday on his own personal Greek island.

‘You actually own an island?’ she remembered querying in disbelief.

‘Sure.’ He had glittered her a smile. ‘And my house is empty a lot of the time. It’s yours any time you want to use it.’

So she had gone. It had been an uncharacteristic response to what had probably just been a throwaway gesture on his part, but it had been too good an opportunity to miss. Although he had casually mentioned that his private jet was available, Lucy had scraped together enough money to fund a cheap flight to Athens instead and then caught the staff ferry to his private island of Prasinisos, with a pile of engrossing books to read. It had been the most impetuous thing she’d ever done and she wasn’t sure what she had expected. She certainly hadn’t expected Drakon to suddenly arrive on a glittering super-yacht the size of Jupiter later that day, when she was emerging from the swimming pool looking like a drowned rat. Nor for him to join her beside the aqua glitter of the infinity pool once she’d showered all the chlorine out of her hair and the fierce beat of the sun had made her feel all lazy and laid-back.

For a while she’d said nothing, because instinct had told her he was a man who valued silence, and gradually she had seen Drakon relax—something she’d suspected he didn’t do very often. He’d shown her the faint scar from the gash on his leg which she’d helped her mother to suture all those years ago, and something about that distant memory had made them both laugh. She remembered their eyes meeting and something intangible shimmering in the air around them. Lucy had been inexperienced, innocent and slightly out of her depth—all those things, yes. But she had also been excited and eager for what had happened later, after a delicious dinner on the terrace once his housekeeper had gone home. For Drakon to fold her into his arms and kiss her and then kiss her some more. It had been as if her every dream had come true in that moment. As if her body had been poised on the brink of something very beautiful.

She’d thought he would quickly get bored with someone who wasn’t at all experienced but her tongue’s tentative exploration of his mouth had caused a low growl of pleasure to rumble up from his throat. He’d held her so tight that her soft body had moulded into the muscular hardness of his, so that when he had carried her off to his bedroom it had felt nothing but right. Even that slight awkwardness when he had stilled inside her and momentarily glared at her hadn’t lasted longer than a couple of seconds.

The following morning she had woken naked in his bed and he had brought her dark coffee, which was thick and sweet, before taking her in his arms again, and the next few days had passed by in a sensual blur. He’d made love to her on the terrace, and in the cabin of his yacht as he’d sailed her round his island and showed her all the little bays and coves. He’d fed her grapes and trickled Greek honey onto a belly which had quivered as he’d licked it off.

And three days later it had all been over, without anything actually being said. There had been no awkward conversation or protracted farewells. He hadn’t insulted her by telling her that his diary was too jam-packed for him to be able to see her again. He’d just given her a deep kiss, said goodbye and dropped her off at the airport by helicopter so at least she hadn’t had to endure that rather bumpy ferry ride back to Athens. She hadn’t heard a squeak from him since and, once she’d realised it wasn’t going to happen, her hurt and disappointment had gradually faded into the recesses of her mind, because Lucy was nothing if not practical. She’d told herself to remember all the good bits and she’d tried not to have unrealistic expectations, because that way you could avoid hurt and disappointment as much as possible. She had been getting on with her life—her rather ordinary and predictable life—until the Greek tycoon had blazed back into it with the most implausible suggestion she’d ever heard!

‘I can’t believe you’re asking me to marry you,’ she breathed.

‘Well, believe it,’ he returned softly. ‘Because it’s true.’

‘But why me?’ she questioned, wishing that her heart would stop thundering. ‘There must be a million women who would make a more suitable wife for a man like you.’

He didn’t even pay her the compliment of pretending to consider her remark and certainly didn’t bother to deny it, just answered with a bluntness which somehow managed to be supremely insulting.

‘There are indeed,’ he agreed. ‘In fact, if I were to measure suitability in terms of sophistication and familiarity with my world, you would be right at the back of the queue, Lucy.’

She swallowed. ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you, Drakon?’

‘Do you think I should?’ he mused. ‘I’ve always been of the mindset that life is too short for prevarication and Niko’s death has only confirmed that.’

He paused and as his night-dark gaze shimmered over her, Lucy wanted to tell him not to look at her like that—yet the craziest thing of all was that she wanted him to carry on doing it and never stop.

‘I’ve never wanted to marry anyone nor have children of my own,’ he said. ‘Despite the fact that I have a vast fortune just waiting for someone to inherit.’

‘Why not?’ she asked quietly.

His black gaze seared into her, as if he was deciding how much to tell her. ‘Because I don’t believe in love. It’s something I’ve never felt nor wanted to feel. To my mind, love is nothing but an invention which seems designed to excuse the most outrageous forms of behaviour.’ His black eyes narrowed. ‘But now I have an heir whether I like it or not and, because I am a twin, this child almost completely carries half my genes. So in a way, I have a ready-made family. I may not have wanted or planned it but now that I have it, I will make the best of it because that is how I operate. Providing Xander with a suitable mother and giving him some sort of grounding is the least I can do to try to compensate for such a horrible start to his young life. And while you may not have much money or be familiar with the world’s high spots, you have something which makes you extra-special, Lucy.’

‘Really? And what might that be?’ Lucy’s heart quickened, though afterwards she would be ashamed of her needy desire to have him shower praise on her, because it didn’t happen. Instead, he listed her credentials like an employer telling her why she had surprisingly beaten the other candidates.

‘You’re a trained nurse for a start,’ he drawled, his Greek accent deep and velvety. ‘A midwife as I recall, which makes you extra-suitable. And you are both pure and respectable, if what I discovered about you back in the summer was anything to go by. Once I started considering you for the role, I realised that your virginity was actually a great asset.’

He didn’t seem to notice that his last remark had made her cheeks grow heated. Of course he didn’t. He was talking at her instead of to her, wasn’t he? He didn’t really care about her thoughts and reactions—nor about the fact that he was making her sound like an upmarket brand of soap. To Drakon Konstantinou she was nothing more than a commodity.

‘Rather than being a bit of a bore, which was how you seemed to regard it at the time?’ she questioned rather snappily.

‘Yes, you could put it like that,’ he said, without missing a beat. ‘Your purity now takes on an entirely different aspect, Lucy, and it has become important to me. It’s an indication of the way you’ve lived your life. You haven’t had a vast number of lovers before me, and such reserve is rare among women.’

‘But what difference does my lifestyle make to what you have in mind?’ she questioned. ‘Why does it matter that I was a virgin?’

His mouth had hardened so that suddenly it resembled a savage slash across the lower part of his face and she could see coldness and calculation enter his black eyes.

‘Because you will be able to lead by example. I want an old-fashioned woman with old-fashioned values and you are the perfect fit. This baby carries the genes of two addicts who were willing to put their own pleasure before his welfare,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Not only do I need to ensure that never happens again, I also need to stack the odds in Xander’s favour from now on.’

Lucy didn’t say anything. Not straight away. Not when he was looking so forbidding and so...angry—though she realised he was angry with his brother and not with her. She rose to her feet from the fireside chair because she felt at a psychological disadvantage having to stare up at him like that and it was making her neck ache. And she needed to put some distance between them. Some very necessary distance to get her thoughts in order. Away from the spell of his proximity and coercive weave of his words.

She walked over to the opposite side of the small room and stared out of the window at the river. The moon was beginning to rise and was forming a dappled silvery path on the darkening water and she could see that a cottage on the opposite bank must have put up their Christmas tree. She blinked as she stared at the glittering lights—rose and gold and green and blue—but felt none of the prescribed magic as she turned to meet Drakon’s hooded gaze. ‘Isn’t the normal thing in these kind of circumstances to employ a nanny?’ she questioned. ‘Which you already have done, by the sound of it. You can afford to engage a whole battery of staff, Drakon. Why do you need a wife?’

He shook his head, like a man who had all the answers—but hadn’t he always seemed like a man with all the answers? ‘Obviously the child will need a full-time nanny and Sofia is eager to continue in that role,’ he said, and paused. ‘But that isn’t the point, Lucy.’

‘Isn’t it?’ she asked quietly.

‘No.’

He shook his head and Lucy could see the bleakness in his eyes. She thought how empty his face looked. As if he’d been drained of all emotion so that he resembled some dark and forbidding statue. As if his body were composed of cold marble instead of flesh and blood, and a sudden trepidation whispered over her skin as she realised there was no real warmth in this man. ‘I don’t understand,’ she breathed.

‘Then let me make it clearer for you. I don’t want this child to grow up in that kind of world—the adopted child of a single billionaire,’ he bit out. ‘I don’t want him looked after by a series of employees with no emotional investment in his future, like I was. I don’t want him sent away to school like I was. Xander needs a family. A real family.’

Lucy swallowed, wondering which of them was being naïve now. Did anyone truly know what a real family was—or did they all just rely on the slushy default version you saw in films, or read about in books, with people clustered round a fire, throwing their heads back in mutual laughter? Yet having a family was the bedrock of society, wasn’t it? It was the dream which the majority of people aspired to, even if the reality was often so different. Was he really suggesting that the legal union of two people who had briefly been lovers could magically create some sort of fairy-tale household?

But then her mind began to focus on something else. On a single word the Greek tycoon had just uttered and which now lodged itself deep in her mind.

Xander.

Xander, his nephew and innocent little baby.

A motherless baby.

Lucy’s heart clenched with a pain she should have anticipated because unwittingly Drakon had stumbled across her Achilles heel. The reason why she always felt as if something inside her was missing and incomplete. The one part of her life which could never be fulfilled, unless...

Her mouth dried.

Unless she was brave enough—or crazy enough—to accept the billionaire’s bizarre offer. Because wasn’t he offering her the magic-wand solution she had once yearned for in the form of instant motherhood? Her mind began to race. Could it work? Could she provide what little Xander needed—and in so doing gain for herself what she thought had been lost for ever?

Take it slowly, she told herself firmly.

Slowly.

‘This sounds like a very long-term plan,’ she suggested carefully.

‘It is.’ Some of the coldness had left his face and in its place she could see conviction. And persuasion. ‘I’m talking endurance, Lucy. About putting a child’s needs first and making a promise to each other that neither of us intends to break. About commitment and stability.’

‘How can you be so sure you could find that with me?’ She stared at him. ‘When you don’t really know me. At school you were years ahead of me. I was just the school nurse’s daughter who was allowed to take certain classes with the boys. Apart from those times when you were having the wound on your leg attended to, you didn’t even notice me. We were just ships which passed in the night and, apart from that, we’ve only spent a few days together.’

‘You think that time we spent on Prasinisos didn’t provide me with the opportunity to discover something of what makes Lucy Phillips tick?’ he enquired softly.

Lucy wanted to turn away from the mocking look in his eyes but that would be an immature response to a perfectly reasonable question. Because they had been intimate—and it would be hypocritical to pretend they hadn’t.

‘I can’t deny we were lovers,’ she husked. ‘But physical intimacy during a mini-break on a Greek island is one thing. Real life is another. We’re strangers, Drakon. How do you know I wouldn’t drive you crackers before the first month was up?’

His eyes narrowed but Lucy couldn’t mistake the brief flash of surprise which had gleamed there. As if he couldn’t quite believe that she was prevaricating instead of instantly accepting his offer.

And wasn’t there a part of her which couldn’t quite believe it herself? Making out as if there were men lining up and asking her to marry them every day of the week!

‘We would have to work at it, in the way that people with arranged marriages have always done,’ he said. ‘And we will be walking into it with our eyes open—without any of the myths of love and romance which set people up for disappointment, and failure. If we refuse to have unrealistic expectations about each other, then we should succeed.’ He slanted her a smile. ‘Does that reassure you?’

Lucy thought how clever he was. And how controlling, too. That slow smile—she was certain—had been angled at her deliberately in order to pump up her heart rate and it had worked, hadn’t it? Was that the main reason he was here—because he thought of her as passive? Wasn’t it time to demonstrate that while she might be poor and unglamorous, that didn’t necessarily mean she was a complete pushover? ‘So what’s in it for me, Drakon?’ she questioned. ‘What made you think you could turn up without warning and ask me to become your wife? Were you so certain I’d say yes?’

Drakon’s eyes narrowed. He felt a certain responsibility towards her because he had unwittingly taken her virginity and had quashed his desire to see her again because he’d known he was capable of hurting her. He’d suspected that someone like her would be unable to cope with a commitment-phobe like him, even though he’d been sorely tempted to have sex with her again. But that had been back then—when his life had been free and unfettered. This was now, when he had an unexpected burden of responsibility to shoulder.

His mouth hardened. ‘I had an idea you might be tempted.’

‘Because?’

Would it be cruel to point out that without him a limited future inevitably beckoned for someone like her? But wouldn’t any future be limited compared with the one he was offering her with all the money she could ever desire? He looked once again at her bare fingers. ‘You don’t show any signs of settling down,’ he observed.

‘Not at the moment, no.’

‘So do you see yourself continuing to make ends meet as a relatively hard-up waitress?’ he mused. ‘Is that how you want the rest of your life to pan out?’

There was anger on her face now. And something which looked like pride. ‘I don’t just waitress. I actually help Caroline with all the cooking,’ she declared icily. ‘And she’s indicated that she’d be prepared to let me buy the business when she eventually retires, which is what I’ve been saving up for. The waitressing is just a means to an end.’

‘And that’s what you really want, is it, Lucy? Resigning yourself to a life of relative poverty. Of a futile wait for Mr Right, perhaps—’

‘Excuse me?’ She pulled back her shoulders and glared at him. ‘You think all women are just waiting around for a would-be husband to leap into their life?’

He gave a careless shrug. ‘I’m saying that plenty of them are, yes—at least, in my experience. But if that’s what you’re hoping for, let me enlighten you. That man is just fantasy. He’s someone who may or may not materialise,’ he said softly. ‘Whereas a rich man with whom you’re sexually compatible—a man who really needs you—he’s here. Right here.’

His words had got through to her, he could see that. Just as he could see the temptation which flickered in her blue eyes.

‘And if I were to agree...’ Her voice tailed off. ‘What kind of marriage would you expect?’

Drakon heard the uncertain note in her voice but her darkening eyes told a different story. And suddenly he found himself being sucked into a vortex of erotic recall. He remembered the softness of her thighs and the untamed bush of hair which concealed her untouched treasure. For perhaps the only time in his adult sexual life, he had been momentarily astonished—and not just because she hadn’t waxed—because what woman of twenty-eight was a virgin in this day and age? He remembered the soft gasp she’d given when he had entered her, the faint pain of her initial response quickly giving way to breathless murmurs of encouragement and then, to her first sweetly sobbing orgasm. And hadn’t that felt sublime? Hadn’t he experienced a deep satisfaction as she had choked out her pleasure against his bare shoulder, her ecstatic response filling him with a rush of primeval pleasure?

He’d made love to her countless times during those few short days—justifying his seemingly insatiable appetite with the assurance that he was simply enjoying introducing her to sex. But it had been more than that, even though he’d been loath to admit it then and was even less inclined to do so now. Her untutored eagerness had lit a strange yearning inside him—one which was being ignited right now.

He felt the exquisite throb of desire at his groin and heard the powerful thunder of his own heart. Maybe it was wrong to be thinking about sex at a time like this, but didn’t they say the life force was at its most powerful during periods of grief and loss? Wasn’t it nature’s way of sustaining the human race, as well as reinforcing that, while his twin brother might be lying cold and dead beneath the hard earth, he, Drakon, was very much alive and at the mercy of his senses?

He began to walk towards her, noticing the instinctive tremble of her lips as he grew closer, but she didn’t stop him, nor show any signs of wanting to. She just stood there, her blue eyes bright and questioning, her thick dark hair spilling out of the untidy plait which snaked down her back.

‘I would expect the usual things which marriage entails,’ he said huskily. ‘Physical intimacy, for a start. I think that’s one thing we both know we really do have in common.’

Distractedly, Lucy rubbed her toe against the rug, scarcely able to believe they were having this kind of conversation. Normally she didn’t have to deal with anything more taxing than someone asking whether there were any gluten-free sandwiches available. Yet Drakon Konstantinou had just come right out and told her they were sexually compatible—him with a vast cast of ex-lovers and her with only one! She had no experience of such things but instinct told her that his words were true.

But was it enough for her to accept his offer of marriage? Enough for her to turn her back on her old life and enter a new one, which might be exciting but was tinged with uncertainty? With a father and a brother in the military she had grown up surrounded by uncertainty and she’d hated it. She’d longed for a safer world. A more predictable world. It was one of the reasons why she’d never really made waves in her own adult life. Why she’d always followed the rules and played safe.

Until she’d bumped into Drakon Konstantinou one balmy summer evening and the world had spun on its axis.

She knew she should say no. She should retreat back into her comfortable little world and try to forget the sexy billionaire and his bizarre offer.

But Lucy had been badly affected by what had happened to her family. In a few short years it had been wiped out as if it had never existed. Her father, brother and mother had all died in relatively quick succession. Orphaned and alone, she’d felt as if she had no real place anywhere. Sometimes she’d felt invisible. She still did. As if people were looking right through her. And all these feelings were compounded by the fact that she could never have children and be able to create a family of her own.

She stared into Drakon’s rugged face, hope flaring inside her despite all her misgivings. Because the Greek tycoon was offering her exactly that. Something she’d once thought impossible but which, unlike him, she had wanted. An instant family. A baby to love and to care for. Her mouth dried. Could it work? Could she make it work? And by doing that give them both what they needed—he a wife and she a child?

She licked her lips. ‘When do you need an answer by?’

‘I don’t see any point in waiting. I am a man who likes to settle a deal as quickly as possible. Now would be ideal.’

She shook her head. ‘Now is too soon, Drakon. I need a few days to process this. To mull over everything you’ve said and decide whether or not it could work. It’s too big a consideration to just toss you an answer.’

His black eyes narrowed and in them Lucy could see speculation.

‘Of course, there’s another factor which needs to be considered. I’d hate you to overlook that, Lucy.’

She asked the question without really thinking about it. ‘Which is what?’

He gave a slow smile. ‘Use your imagination.’

The dip in his voice and the suddenly smoky light in his eyes made Lucy realise he was going to touch her and on one level she recognised that it was studied and manipulative. But it still worked, because Drakon knew how to press all her buttons. Even though an inner voice was urging caution, Lucy let him pull her in his arms to kiss her and, oh, she was hungry for that kiss.

So hungry.

Her fingers coiled around his broad shoulders as the voice of reason tried to warn her this was only going to confuse matters. But her body was refusing to listen to reason—its hungry demands silencing every sensible objection. Because this was amazing. Sweet sensations were flooding her body and her newly awoken sexual appetite—honed by five months of aching absence—made her think she might faint if Drakon didn’t quell this sudden urgent need inside her.

His hand drifted up underneath her baggy sweater, his fingers encountering the shivering flesh of her torso before moving upwards to cup the straining mound of her breast. It was exquisite torture to feel her nipple pushing greedily against the lace of her bra, and all the while his lips were gently prising hers open. Exploring. Probing. Making her melt with the sensual flicker of his tongue. Making her writhe her hips in wordless appeal. She could feel the tension in his powerful body as he levered one powerful thigh between hers and it eased some of the pressure, even as it managed to build some more. She could feel the hardness at his groin. A hard ridge pressing urgently against the immaculate cut of his trousers, which told her graphically just how much he wanted her. She should have felt shy but that was the last thing she was feeling and Lucy knew that if the Greek had ripped off her jeans and panties before positioning himself where she was aching most, she would have taken him deep inside her.

‘Drakon,’ she choked out.

But her words seemed to shatter the spell as, abruptly, the kissing stopped. Moving his head away, he rocked back on his heels, inscrutable black eyes searching her face intently, and Lucy could see a nerve flickering at his temple. Had he decided he didn’t want her after all? she wondered wildly. Had that rapid near-seduction been a demonstration of his power over her, rather than real desire? And did that mean he was about to withdraw his offer of marriage?

‘Yes, I want you very much,’ he said, scarily answering her unspoken question before directing a rueful glance at his watch. ‘But now is not the time. Nor the place. Not when my car is waiting and I have a raft of meetings I need to attend. But it will keep.’

‘K-keep?’ she echoed.

‘Neh,’ he agreed, glittering her a sudden smile. ‘I’ve never been married before, Lucy. I’ve never wanted to be part of such a flawed institution, if the truth were known. But if I am to be your husband—which I fully intend to be—then there will be plenty of opportunity for lovemaking. And don’t they say that hunger is the best aphrodisiac of all?’

All the time he was speaking, his fingertip was tracing a line along the edges of her lips and Lucy hated the way her mouth quivered in response. Just as she hated his arrogant assumption that she would be his wife when she hadn’t given him her decision. ‘But I haven’t said I’ll marry you yet. And I can’t do that until I’ve met baby Xander,’ she added firmly.

A look of calculation entered his black eyes. ‘The key word is “yet”,’ he observed silkily. ‘For it indicates that your acceptance is simply a matter of time. We both know that.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘Because you will marry me, Lucy. Not just because I can reward you with the things most people spend their lives craving, but because you are in a position to help a vulnerable little baby as no other person could do right now. But that’s not all. You will marry me because you want me and the only way you’re going to have me is by agreeing to become my wife.’

CHAPTER THREE

THERE WAS BARELY any room for the limousine to make its way down the icy lane and Lucy’s heart was hammering as she locked the door of her cottage and made her way towards the luxury car. She looked around at the leafless trees and frosty bushes as if committing them to memory one last time—because who knew when she would be back?

Inadvertently she cracked through an icy puddle and mud sloshed onto her newly polished boots as Drakon’s chauffeur opened the door of the car, her tentative smile being met with nothing more than a deferential nod. As she slid onto the back seat she could feel her anxiety grow and the doubts which had been bugging her for days threatened to overwhelm her. She thought about the way Drakon had kissed her and the way her body had responded so hungrily. She thought about his track record with women and her own miserable tally of just one lover. She thought about how detached and indifferent he could seem, except when engaged in some form of sensual contact and a very real fear washed over her as she realised she was entering territory which was completely alien to her.

You don’t have to do this, she told herself. It’s not too late to pull out. Nobody’s forcing you to become the Greek tycoon’s wife. If he can’t get you to look after his orphaned nephew then his money will buy him the best care in the world. It isn’t your responsibility.

For a split second she thought about jumping out of the car. About rushing back to the sanctuary of her cottage and emailing Drakon to tell him she couldn’t go through with it. But then the limousine’s powerful engine fired into life and they were on their way to London and suddenly it was too late for Lucy to change her mind. And wasn’t the truth of it that deep down she didn’t want to, for all kinds of reasons? It certainly wasn’t the lure of the Greek tycoon’s glamorous lifestyle which was calling to her. She’d seen enough rich boys at the boarding school where her mother had worked to know that money certainly didn’t come with a guarantee of happiness. The thought of having a baby and a family of her own was the most powerful motivator, of course it was—but there was something else, too. Something which was much more intangible, and that was the way Drakon made her feel whenever he touched her. As if she were real. As if she were capable of things she’d never imagined she could do. It was a heady feeling but it was tinged with a danger she didn’t quite yet understand.

All through the journey to the capital, she tried to relax, trying her best to keep her boots from smearing mud on the pristine leather interior. Not for the first time she wondered what had happened to one of her suede moccasins, which had mysteriously gone missing—and it was something of a relief to be able to think about something unconnected to Drakon as she tried to work out exactly what had happened to it. Once she had exhausted all possibilities she tried to concentrate on the landscape which was rushing past the tinted windows, but her busy thoughts ensured that most of what she saw remained a blur until they reached the centre of London. And that was when Lucy blinked in surprise, feeling as if she’d emerged from her countryside bubble to arrive in a city she scarcely recognised.

Because Christmas was all around and it was as if the entire city had been taken over by Disney. The big stores were shiny with tinsel and glitter and fake snow. Red-clothed Santas with fluffy white beards rocked manically as little children pressed their noses against the plate-glass windows. Past the giant tree on Trafalgar Square the luxury car purred and when they stopped at some traffic lights, Lucy opened one of the windows slightly so she could hear the carol singers who were collecting money for the homeless. Her heart clenched as she registered the first notes of ‘Silent Night’ because it always reminded her of her brother, and quickly she pressed the button so that the electric window floated up to blot out the nostalgic carol. Instead she focussed on the crowds of people who all seemed to be on a mission, hell-bent on buying gifts even though there were several weeks left until the big day.

There were plenty of things Lucy liked about Christmas. The lights. The colours. The music. The way usually inhibited people went out of their way to smile and say hello. She just didn’t like the way it made her feel, because it seemed to emphasise all the things she didn’t have. It was a time when you could feel extra-lonely if you lived on your own because most people seemed to have somebody, while she had nobody. It was when she most missed having a family. When she found herself feeling emotionally vulnerable—which wasn’t a particularly nice sensation. Usually she tucked herself away with a large supply of chocolate and sobbed her way through just about every corny film which was showing on TV.

But this year was going to be different. Her teeth pressed down hard on her bottom lip and she gnawed away at it. And how. She had a wedding to organise and—this was the bit she still couldn’t get her head around—she was going to be a Christmas bride. At least, that was the plan—although nothing had been arranged just yet, which was making the thought of marrying Drakon seem even more surreal than it already was. Excitement and dread flooded through her, yet the truth was that, despite her misgivings about becoming the Greek tycoon’s wife, she had stumbled at the first hurdle. She had fallen in love with his orphaned nephew.

Her throat thickened as she remembered meeting the tiny baby—a meeting on which everything had hinged. She had insisted on Drakon being absent. Had she been afraid he would influence her? That he would distract her with his powerful presence and remind her of how much she still wanted him? She had expected objections from the powerful tycoon. She’d imagined he might wish to observe her first contact with his tiny nephew as a kind of interactive job interview, but to her surprise he had agreed to stay away. She’d been jittery with nerves—because the thought of holding a baby again after so long had thrown up all kinds of complicated emotions. Alone, she had waited in one of the reception rooms of Drakon’s vast London apartment until the nanny had appeared with a snowy white bundle in her arms. Greek-born Sofia must have been in her fifties, though her step was spritely as she carried the baby towards Lucy.

And Lucy remembered the compassion which had washed over her as she’d stared down at Xander’s tiny head and it had been pure instinct which had made her extend her arms so that she could cradle the infant close to her racing heart. She had been prepared for the pain which had speared through her at the thought that she would never hold a child of her own like this, but not for the instant bonding which had followed. Had it been provoked by tenderness for one who had lost so much at such an early age, or by the tiny starfish hand which had clutched her extended finger and melted her heart?

She had asked if she could give the baby his bottle and then cuddled him until he had fallen asleep. And soon after Sofia had taken Xander back to the nursery, Lucy’s telephone had rung, as if it had been programmed to do so.

‘Well?’

Drakon’s question had been terse and to the point and there had seemed little point in prevaricating. Why pretend that this was anything other than a cold-blooded business arrangement?

‘Yes.’ Lucy’s voice had been low but unfaltering. ‘I will be your wife.’

‘Good.’ There was a pause. ‘In which case, you need to pack a case and I’ll send a car to collect you. Be ready tomorrow morning.’

‘So soon?’

‘What’s the point of waiting, Lucy? Delay will serve little purpose.’

‘But I’ve got three cocktail parties next week for Caro’s Canapés which I’m booked to work at.’

‘Leave that to me. I will arrange a suitable replacement.’ His voice had dipped to become a murmured caress. ‘I intend for you to become my wife as quickly as possible and I think we both know the reason for that.’

Lucy had opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. Because didn’t she want that too? Wasn’t there a tiny part of her which worried that if they left it too long, Drakon might suddenly change his mind and realise that it was a completely preposterous idea to marry someone like her? And wasn’t it crazy to realise how gutted she would be if that were the case? ‘No, tomorrow sounds absolutely fine,’ she said compliantly.

Which was why she was now on her way to Drakon’s Mayfair apartment and her brand-new life. Trying not to feel like Cinderella as she perched on the edge of the limousine’s soft leather seat and attempted to keep her muddy boots elevated.

Her heart was pounding as they skirted Hyde Park and drove towards the imposing modern block in Mayfair, which commanded a prime view of the city’s largest park. Lucy peered out of the window, her heart missing a beat as she saw Drakon’s imposing figure imprinted darkly against the glittering windows of the block. She blinked in surprise. He was waiting, she realised. Waiting for her?

He seemed lost in thought and hadn’t noticed the car, giving Lucy the opportunity to study him unobserved. She thought that seeing him standing on the street made him seem even more of a stranger than he already was. She noticed a blonde wearing dark glasses and a fur coat do a double-take as she walked past him with a tiny white dog trotting on a red lead, though unfortunately the dog chose that precise moment to cock its little leg against a lamppost. Yet wasn’t that the type of sleek woman he should have selected as his wife? Lucy wondered painfully, trying and failing not to drink him in with her hungry gaze.

On the cold winter day, he was dressed entirely in black and the effect was to make him dominate his surroundings even more than usual. The inky overcoat echoed the dark gleam of his eyes but his mouth was hard and unsmiling. He’d had his hair cut and the rock-star strands were now neatly trimmed in a style which seemed to emphasise all his olive-skinned beauty. Suddenly she realised he could make her blood sing even from this distance away, although the day was so cold and wintry. Being around him was like having a fever, she thought, clasping her fingers together so tightly that the knuckles cracked.

Some sort of notification must have gone off, for he slid his phone from his inside pocket and glanced down at it, then narrowed his black eyes to focus on the approaching limousine. Had he been forewarned that she was on her way, perhaps by his taciturn driver? In desperation, Lucy glanced down to see that her hands were shaking and a sudden shiver of trepidation whispered over her skin before she dared lift her head to meet his gaze. Was she imagining the faint flash of disapproval in his eyes as the car purred to a halt and he moved forward to open the door for her?

A cold gust of wind whipped through her as she stepped onto the pavement, acutely aware of the fact that her best coat was looking decidedly threadbare and that, although she’d spent an hour last night buffing up her boots, their newfound shine didn’t hide the fact that they were old. She’d tried to do her best with her appearance but her resources were limited and even if they hadn’t been—what did a poor girl wear when she was about to move in with her billionaire fiancé? She felt like diving back into the car and begging the driver to take her home, but somehow she managed to scrabble together a memory—an important thing she’d learnt on her very first day on the wards as a student nurse. And afterwards, whenever her mother had sunk into one of her deep depressions and Lucy had attempted to help her spirits up. Keep it positive. Look on the bright side.

‘So,’ she said brightly, tilting her chin upwards and managing a faint reproduction of a smile. ‘Here I am.’

Yes. Here she was. Drakon tensed as he felt a rush of something he didn’t recognise. Was it incredulity that he’d selected this woman to be his bride when she couldn’t have looked like a more unlikely candidate if she’d tried? But he’d had no choice. And wasn’t that the story of his life? he reminded himself grimly. That unwanted responsibilities were always waiting in the shadows to grab at him and to direct his life onto a path he had never intended...

Her big blue eyes were looking at him uncertainly and something made him dip his head to brush his lips over hers in a fleeting kiss, amused by her instinctive intake of breath and the sudden confusion of her expression, as if she hadn’t been expecting him to embrace her so publicly. In truth, he hadn’t been expecting it himself, but he found himself turned on by the fact she wasn’t wearing any make-up and by the provocative tremble of her lips. Maybe he should take her inside and kiss her a little more thoroughly, so that she would lose that rather unflattering look of apprehension and replace it with one of passion instead.

‘Let’s go inside,’ he said abruptly. Drawing away, he ushered her into the luxury complex, past the security guard who was regarding her with open curiosity.

‘What about my suitcase?’ she was saying as they reached the elevator and the doors slid open.

‘What about it?’

‘I’ve left it in the car.’

‘The driver will bring it inside shortly. You don’t have to worry about things like that any more, Lucy.’ Rather impatiently, he pressed the button. ‘You’ll find my staff will deal with the more humdrum elements of your life from now on and you won’t have to bother with logistics. So why don’t you just concentrate on getting to know one of your new homes?’

‘One of them?’ she affirmed breathlessly.

The wave of his hand was careless. Sometimes he forgot that the extent of his wealth was remarkable to most people and he supposed he should be grateful that his new fiancée hadn’t already tallied up all his properties with greedy anticipation. ‘I have homes in New York and Athens as well as this one,’ he drawled. My Greek island villa you have already seen, of course.’

‘Of course,’ she said.

He watched as she fixed her eyes imploringly on the bright red arrow indicating their progress towards his penthouse apartment, as if she was finding the confined space in the elevator claustrophobic. You and me both, he thought unwillingly, his attention drawn to the curves of her body, which her thin grey coat couldn’t quite disguise. He could feel the pump of his heart and the throb at his groin and wondered whether he should rid himself of some of the frustration which had been building up inside him for days now. But thoughts of seduction were vanquished by the words which burst from her lips almost as if she hadn’t planned to say them, her blue eyes suddenly darkening so that they looked as blue as a Grecian sea.

‘I wasn’t...’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘To be honest I wasn’t expecting to see you until this evening. I thought you’d be working.’

Surely that wasn’t disappointment he could hear in her soft English voice? A flicker of a smile touched the edges of Drakon’s lips. Maybe there was more fire to Lucy Phillips than he had initially given her credit for. ‘I had a rare window in my diary and I thought it might be less daunting if I was here to greet you myself,’ he explained as the elevator reached the penthouse and the doors slid open.

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Make the most of it. I’m not usually known for my kindness,’ he informed her drily. ‘Come on in.’

Obediently, she followed him into the reception room, and he thought how much she resembled a new member of staff as she stood nervously in the centre of his modern London apartment with its bird’s-eye view over the park. But in a way, that was exactly what she was. As his wife, she would be fulfilling her prescribed role just as adequately as one of his chefs, or drivers, or housekeepers. And wasn’t her trepidation one of the reasons he had chosen to marry her? She was both compliant and inexperienced and because of that he could mould her into the kind of spouse he wanted her to be, just as he would train up a new assistant.

‘It’s huge,’ she commented.

‘But you’ve been here before. When you met Xander.’

‘Yes. That’s right. But I only saw the nursery areas. I had no idea there was this other huge section.’ She looked around, cocking her head to one side as if listening for something. ‘Where is Xander?’

Drakon still wasn’t used to having the baby around and he frowned, trying to remember. ‘Sofia has taken him to the doctor for some sort of routine check. At least, I think that’s what she said.’

She sucked in a deep breath. ‘You didn’t consider it might be better if I could have gone along as well? If I’m to be his, well, his...mother.’

Something unknown clutched at Drakon’s heart like a vice. Was it anger that his brother should have treated his son with such a failure of care and cast him into the unwanted role of father? Or fear that he would be incapable of giving this child any true affection, as his own father had been unable to give him? With an effort, he pushed the bitter memories away—for what good would they serve him now?

‘There will be plenty of time for you to play happy families, Lucy. First things first. Let me show you around properly and then I have a surprise for you.’

‘I’m not crazy about surprises,’ she warned him lightly.

‘I think you’ll like this one,’ he promised.

Lucy thought how arrogant he sounded. Did that mean she was going to have to pretend? To smooth the way for their future marriage by showing him gratitude at all times? Would that be the grown-up way to proceed?

She began to follow him through the huge apartment, trying and failing to remember the precise configuration of the rooms. But she would quickly learn where everything was, she reassured herself—despite the fact that the entire ground floor of her riverside cottage would have fitted into one of the en suite bathrooms! One of the vast reception rooms led into a book-lined study, which looked more like a public library and contained leather-bound volumes in both English and Greek. There was an enormous kitchen with an adjoining dining room, three big en suite bedrooms on one side of the wide corridor, as well as the nursery suite on the other, which was completely self-contained.

‘I’ve given you your own bedroom,’ he said as his footsteps halted. ‘I decided it would be more appropriate if we slept apart until the wedding. Something befitting the status of my relatively innocent fiancée.’ His black eyes gleamed. ‘That doesn’t mean we cannot be intimate or imaginative, of course.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’ll be right next door,’ he informed her. ‘It will be like a throwback to a different age. I cannot tell you how much the novelty of that appeals to me, Lucy.’

Lucy’s breasts had grown heavy at his provocative words but her erotic recall was forgotten the moment he pushed open the bedroom door. Her lips fell open but she barely noticed the amazing view or huge bed, or the superb painting of a tiny fishing village which looked suspiciously like the one on his private island. All she could see were the piles of clothes which were everywhere, making the room look more like the changing room of an upmarket department store than a bedroom. There were sleek dresses hanging in front of the built-in cupboards and a gorgeous plum-coloured coat with a velvet collar. One of the cupboards was open and inside she could see colour-coordinated lines of beautiful silky shirts, and skirts which varied from pencil to flounce. Further along the rail were more casual clothes—cashmere sweaters which bore little resemblance to her own hand-knits and denim jeans which she was doubtful she’d be able to slide over her curvy hips. This must be the surprise he’d been talking about.

‘I hope you like them,’ Drakon said as she continued to stare at it all in silence.

Lucy forced herself to say something dutiful which wouldn’t sound ungrateful, because there was no denying he must have gone to a lot of trouble. ‘They’re gorgeous. Did you—?’

‘Actually, my partner chose them.’

‘Your partner?’ she questioned blankly and, although it was unconscious sexism on her part, she instantly imagined some strapping Greek male walking into a store waving a charge card.

‘Amy,’ he supplied, clearly oblivious to the sudden uncertainty in her voice. ‘We’ve worked together for years.’

She wondered if he was aware of the emotional impact of his words, or of the exact way he’d phrased them—because didn’t his relationship with his partner sound way more intimate and close than the one he had with her? Lucy could feel her heart punching against her chest in a way which was making her feel almost dizzy. ‘I see. And does... Amy choose all your girlfriends’ clothes for you?’

‘Never. But then I’ve never been in a situation like this before. I knew your wardrobe was insufficiently versatile to be able to cope with your new role as my wife,’ he said, clearly seeking diplomatic words to take the sting out of his statement. ‘And I thought you’d be too busy packing to have the time to hit the shops.’

Was that so? Or just that he thought she would fail miserably at the task? That her lack of experience—and money—meant she’d be incapable of selecting her own clothes? But Lucy tried to be positive and take Drakon at his word. She had to be, or this simply wasn’t going to work. And she would never have chosen any of these exquisite clothes—not in a million years. She wouldn’t have dared purchase items which individually probably cost more than she earned in a month. The question was whether she’d be able to change or return any without embarrassment if they turned out not to fit.

On a nearby chest she could see a deep drawer which was partially open and, sucking in a breath, she walked over and pulled it wide open to find it filled with the most provocative lingerie imaginable. Sexy thong panties were lined up beside balcony bras. Silk stockings and lacy suspender belts lay side by side and Lucy blinked at them in disbelief, sudden ice rippling down her spine. ‘Please don’t tell me your partner choose these?’

He shook his head and laughed. ‘Of course not. I bought these myself. It happens to be the most enjoyable shopping trip I’ve done in years, if you must know. Do you like them?’

Lucy continued to stare at them as she considered his question. On the one hand, of course she did. This was the kind of underwear she’d never imagined herself wearing, not in her wildest dreams. It was impossible not to like such exquisitely made garments, nor to imagine the amount of work which must have gone into making them, but... She turned to him, blinking her eyes rapidly. ‘How on earth did you know my size?’

He shrugged. ‘I guessed.’

‘You guessed,’ she repeated slowly. ‘Because you have such a comprehensive knowledge of a woman’s body that you instinctively know what size bra she wears?’

‘I’m in the ship-building industry, Lucy. Learning about dimensions comes with the territory.’ A smile curved the edges of his sensual mouth. ‘The shoes were a little more difficult.’

‘The shoes?’ she questioned blankly as the expansive wave of his hand indicated rows of high-heeled shoes and butter-soft leather boots she hadn’t even noticed before. She wondered what on earth he was doing as he bent down to retrieve something from underneath the bed, and was momentarily taken aback when he produced a suede moccasin and waved it in the air—like a magician plucking a rabbit from a top hat. ‘That’s my shoe!’ she declared.

‘I know.’ He gave slow smile. ‘I picked it up from that pile by your front door so I could get your size right, on the day I asked you to marry me. It isn’t really a winter shoe, so I didn’t think you’d notice it had gone.’

It took a couple of seconds before Lucy could bring herself to speak and when she did her words came spitting out like bullets. ‘I did notice, as it happens. I don’t actually own enough pairs of shoes not to realise when one goes missing.’ She glared at him, still not quite believing what he’d just told her. ‘So let me get this straight. You thought you’d go ahead with some modern-day enactment of Cinderella’s slipper and I’m supposed to coo with delight in response?’

‘I certainly had hoped for something a little more enthusiastic than your current reaction,’ he offered drily.

‘Well, please don’t bother in future. Like I said, I’m not the biggest fan of surprises. In fact, don’t bother with—’

But her sentence was destined never to be completed because Drakon had pulled her into his arms and was kissing her. Kissing her so thoroughly that all the breath left her lungs. And Lucy let him. No, that wasn’t quite true. She actively encouraged him. Was it lack of oxygen which made her so instantly yielding? Which made her gasp out a note of breathless approval as his mouth roved hungrily over hers, before darting her tongue into his mouth as if it were a weapon? Or was it simply that she was so incensed by what he’d done—by his arrogance and control—that she felt as if she’d been taken over by a different kind of desire? So that very quickly the kiss became something it had never been on Prasinisos. This wasn’t soft and searching but punishing, and hard. It was driven by frustration—that he had been so high-handed about overhauling her appearance and given someone she’d never met carte blanche to play such a key role in changing it. But there was physical frustration, too, gnawing away inside her like some alien creature she had no idea how to handle. She wondered if sex would release some of the tight frustration which was coiling inside her like a compressed spring. Whether now was the time to tell him she didn’t want his partner buying her clothes for her. That she wasn’t just some kind of doll who could be dressed up for his approval before she was permitted to be seen in public.

‘I don’t know why we’re fighting about clothes, Lucy,’ he said unevenly as they broke away to drag oxygen into their air-starved lungs. ‘Since my expressed preference is to see you not wearing anything at all.’

And wasn’t it pathetic how thrilled she was to hear that husky compliment? As if she was only just beginning to realise that, despite her somewhat homely appearance and complete lack of fashion sense, Drakon Konstantinou really did fancy her. But that was one of the reasons she was here, Lucy reminded herself. Her midwifery training wouldn’t mean a thing without the white-hot chemistry which seemed to combust whenever they touched.

She felt blindsided by the sense of something which, having been awoken, now needed urgently to be fed. Was that why she let him kiss her again and to deepen it with provocative intimacy, so that she moaned softly into his mouth? And something about that moan made him lever her up against the wall, his face dark and inscrutable as he looked down at her. She could sense the tension which was making his powerful body seem as tight as a strung bow and, where they were touching, her skin felt as if it were on fire.

His fingers were unbuttoning her grey coat and unashamedly roving beneath her sweater and when he jutted his hips forward like that, she could feel the hard column of his erection pressing against her. Beneath her thick denim jeans the molten slick of desire made itself known and Lucy longed for him to touch her there. His fingers were whispering over the cool skin of her torso, moving down towards the top button of her jeans, and she shivered as he popped it open then slid her zip down with a dexterity which suggested he must have undressed millions of women before.

But suddenly Lucy saw herself as an outside observer might see her—all windswept and rumpled with the Greek tycoon’s fingers burrowing their way inexorably towards her panties. Why, she hadn’t even taken her coat off! She’d only been in his apartment for ten minutes and all they’d done was to fight and kiss and now he was about to take it one step further. If she didn’t put a halt to this then before she knew it, she would be pressed up against that wall with Drakon thrusting deep inside her.

She pressed her hand against his chest, feeling the powerful pound of his heart beneath her palm. ‘We need to stop this right now.’

‘Oh, Lucy. That’s not the message I was getting a moment ago,’ he drawled.

Well, it’s the m-message you’re getting now,’ she said, unable to iron the tremble from her voice. ‘I need to freshen up before Sofia comes back with the baby and to...’

‘To what?’ he questioned mockingly as her words tailed off.

Lips pressed together, she gave him a determined smile. ‘To unpack my case and settle in. And to be honest, Drakon...’ She hesitated. ‘I think you’re right about having separate rooms, but let’s do it properly, shall we—with no sneaking around the corridors at midnight? Maybe we should wait until we’re married until we have...’’

‘Sex?’ he supplied, his eyebrows arching in disbelief. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say?’

She could feel hot colour flooding her cheeks and, although she realised she could be accused of having double standards, wasn’t it better this way? Because what if her earlier doubts came true and she drove him crazy—wouldn’t it be easier to draw a line under the whole thing if they hadn’t become lovers? Easier to walk away if she hadn’t had a second distracting taste of physical intimacy? And it would do Drakon good to demonstrate that he wasn’t the one making all the rules, and she wasn’t going to be totally submissive. To show him that she might have agreed to this marriage of convenience but that didn’t make her into some sort of puppet.

‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to say,’ she agreed primly.

Still he waited, as if she was going to suddenly turn around and tell him she was joking—as if no woman in her right mind would refuse the opportunity to fall into bed with him at the earliest opportunity.

And Lucy wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t enjoyed the brief look of disbelief which flashed from Drakon’s ebony eyes when he realised she meant every word she said.

CHAPTER FOUR

LUCY AWOKE TO the sound of a baby’s cry and instinct made her sit bolt upright in bed, her heart clenching with painful recognition. Hunger, she thought, as she listened some more. Funny how you could still recognise the different nuances of an infant’s cry even though it had been so long since that sound had been part of her daily routine.

Heavy-eyed after a restless night, she got out of bed and it took a few seconds for her befuddled brain to realise she wasn’t tucked up in her cosy riverside cottage, but in the fanciest bedroom she’d ever seen. Her new home. The vast Mayfair apartment where she would live as wife to one of the world’s most powerful men. Above her head, a chandelier glittered like a shoal of falling diamonds and silk rugs lay strewn over a pale wooden floor, which felt deliciously silky against her bare feet. Grabbing her dressing gown, she knotted it tightly around her waist. It was actually her old dressing gown which she’d brought with her from home because it seemed that her luxury replacement wardrobe didn’t cater for a sensible garment you could throw on first thing in the morning to cover up your pyjamas and feed a baby in. Presumably because once she was married she would no longer be wearing pyjamas. Running her fingers through her hair to tame its tousled wildness, she set off towards the nursery.

The crying had stopped by the time Lucy got there and she was greeted by a scene of perfect domesticity. Sofia was sitting on a yellow sofa giving Xander a bottle while soft nursery rhymes played gently in the background. It felt a little strange for Lucy to be standing in her nightclothes in front of someone she’d only met a couple of times but the middle-aged nanny merely looked up and gave her a friendly smile as she entered the room.

‘Good morning, Lucy,’ she said. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Very well, thank you,’ said Lucy with more politeness than truth—because nothing was more boring than hearing someone relate the story of what a bad night they’d had. She certainly didn’t want Sofia quizzing her about the reasons for her restlessness. Reason, she corrected herself silently. One reason alone—all six feet three of him. ‘You should have woken me.’

Sofia shook her head. ‘Drakon said you were to be left undisturbed.’

Drakon. Lucy started at the mention of his name and she thought—how pathetic is that? Had her heart missed a beat because she’d resisted his sexual overtures when she’d arrived yesterday and been haunted by tantalising dreams about him ever since? Or because it was still difficult to believe that the gorgeous billionaire would soon be her husband and that this was now her reality? A reality brought home by the stilted dinner they’d shared last evening, presided over by his stern-faced housekeeper, Zena—a meal which had kept being interrupted while Drakon had dealt with one international phone call after another. He’d been talking to someone in New York when eventually Lucy had excused herself and his absent wave of farewell as she’d headed off to her bedroom had spoken volumes. He hadn’t followed her and she hadn’t really expected him to, because instinct told her that a man like Drakon would never beg a woman for intimacy when she had told him it wasn’t going to happen. She’d lain there listening until eventually she’d heard him heading for bed, freezing with hope and expectation as his footsteps had paused outside her door, before moving on. As an introduction to life in the fast lane, it hadn’t exactly felt welcoming. Or maybe he had just been making a point...

She stood in the doorway watching as Sofia fed the baby and suddenly felt almost redundant. With a touch of anxiety she licked her lips and looked around, but the room was pristinely tidy. ‘Is there anything I can do? Some dusting, or tidying up?’

‘No, honestly, I’m fine. It’s all under control. Drakon employs an army of people to do the housework for him. He’s going down for a nap shortly but you could do the midday feed if you like. But only if you have time before you go out for lunch,’ Sofia amended hastily.

Lucy maintained her bright smile even though she was aware that her voice sounded brittle. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was going out for lunch.’

Sofia’s eyes crinkled in a smile. ‘Apparently. Zena told me. The car has been ordered for you. Lucky you,’ she added, in her perfect but heavily accented English. ‘It will inevitably be somewhere grand.’

Lucy hoped her expression didn’t give away her feelings as she returned to her bedroom and tugged off her dressing gown. Whether or not the restaurant was grand was completely beside the point. It was one thing to agree to a marriage of convenience, she thought furiously as she stood beneath the fierce blast of the shower. But quite another when she was being treated a convenience. Did Drakon think he could just move her around like a vacuum cleaner? How come the housekeeper and the nanny knew she was going out for lunch, when it was a mystery to her?

She dried her hair and, for the first time, tried on some of the new clothes which had been chosen by his business partner, Amy. Last night at dinner she’d stubbornly insisted on wearing one of her own dresses, still needled by the fact that Drakon had asked someone else to kit her out for her new role in his life. Yet hadn’t her defiance backfired on her, so that she’d been left having to endure the entire meal feeling somewhat less than? Her navy shirt-dress dress was her go-to favourite but there was no doubt that the fabric looked cheap against all the unrestrained luxury of Drakon’s home and Lucy was certain his housekeeper had been looking down her nose at her, as if wondering why someone like her was associating with the impeccably clad tycoon. Hadn’t the same question crossed her own mind more than once as the evening had progressed?

So just go with the flow, she told herself as she rifled through the colour-coordinated rows of garments before pulling out a long-sleeved dress in silk chiffon. The soft violet hue was the colour which sometimes tinged a late sunset and, admittedly, a shade she would never have thought of choosing for herself. The delicate fabric floated to just above the knee and made her waist look positively tiny, and she teamed it with a pair of shoes higher than anything she’d ever worn before. Did the added height make her assume a rather awkward gait? Was that why the middle-aged housekeeper did a double-take as Lucy cautiously picked her way into the dining room for breakfast?

‘Good morning, Dhespinis Phillips,’ said Zena.

‘Good morning, Zena.’ Lucy sat down at the table and gave the housekeeper a nervous smile. ‘Um...is Drakon...?’

‘The master went to the office at seven this morning, but he left you a note,’ said Zena, indicating an envelope which was propped up in front of a vase of flame-coloured roses. ‘I will bring you some breakfast.’

‘Thank you.’

Lucy thought about the housekeeper’s words as she picked up the envelope. The master. It was an oddly archaic term of address yet it seemed scarily suitable. Because Drakon was the master, wasn’t he? The master of all he surveyed. At least that was the impression he gave, with his cabal of loyal staff, his enormous wealth and his different homes dotted around the world. Was he expecting to become her master once they were wed—was she to obey him in all things, as the marriage ceremony used to demand but which most modern couples now rejected? And shouldn’t this be something they discussed before she allowed him to slide that gold ring on her finger?

Slitting open the envelope, she pulled out a single sheet of paper, realising that this was the first time she’d ever seen Drakon’s writing. It was exactly as she would have imagined it to be. Angular black lines slashed over the thick writing paper. Succinct, forceful and strong. A reluctant smile curved the edges of her lips. Just like him.

My car will pick you up at 12.25. We’ll eat lunch at the Granchester for reasons which will quickly become evident.

Mysterious as well as autocratic, she thought as she drank some inky Greek coffee and picked at a bowl of iced mango, before getting up to leave.

She spent the next hour exploring the sprawling apartment and studying some of the books she found in the library, before going to the nursery to give the baby his feed. But at least her interaction with Xander cheered her, and as he glugged greedily on the teat she buried her nose in his silky hair, remembering how much she loved tiny babies and how much she’d missed them. And this baby would soon be her son. The child she had always longed for and never thought she’d have.

But she couldn’t stem the dark doubts which began to crowd into her mind as she winded the infant and laid him in his crib. He was so cute, with his black eyes and matching hair—a miniature version of his father’s identical twin brother. What if she fell hopelessly in love with this little infant and her marriage failed, as so many marriages did, despite Drakon’s determination for that not to happen? Because he couldn’t control everything, could he, no matter how much he tried?

He’d told her he didn’t believe in love and that he’d never been in love—but who was to say that the thunderbolt wouldn’t one day hit him, as it had hit so many cynical disbelievers in the past? In that scenario, wouldn’t she become an also-ran in Xander’s life? The woman with no blood ties with no real claim on the child who could be dispensed of as carelessly as you would yesterday’s newspapers. Lucy sighed, knowing she mustn’t think like that because nobody was ever given any guarantees in this life—you just had to do the best you could in the circumstances.

She was nervous as she snuggled herself into the cashmere coat with the velvet collar and slid into the back of the waiting limousine, and even more nervous when the car drew up outside the landmark Granchester Hotel after a ridiculously short journey from the apartment. Outside the impressive building, she could see an enormous Christmas tree, topped with a huge golden star and smaller gold and silver stars which dangled from the abundant branches. The doorman hurried forward to open the door for her and Lucy gingerly made her way into the gilded foyer in her new shoes, her heart missing a beat when she spotted Drakon, with his back to her, standing beside another decorated fir tree—almost as big as the one at the front of the hotel.

Dark, broad-shouldered and powerful, he seemed oblivious to the stares he was attracting from the other guests and she wondered whether something must have alerted him to her approach. Why else did he suddenly turn around? He was mid-conversation on his phone but his eyes narrowed and his words seemed to die away as she approached and, abruptly, he cut the call. Something about the way he was looking at her was making her feel breathless and excited and scared all at the same time and Lucy found herself resenting his effortless power over her.

‘Lucy,’ he murmured as he helped her slide the coat from her shoulders. ‘You’re here.’

‘Yes, I’m here. Though I could have walked in less time than it took to drive!’

‘I don’t think so. Not in those shoes,’ he commented wryly, his gaze travelling down to her feet and lingering on them for longer than was strictly necessary.

‘You don’t like them?’ she asked, berating herself for needing reassurance but asking for it all the same.

Drakon heard the genuine doubt in her voice and, unusually, he was surprised—searching her face for signs of disingenuousness and finding none. Was she out of her mind? Didn’t she realise that every man in the place was staring at her as if she’d just tumbled down from the heavens? Of course, she didn’t. Because she was totally without guile, he realised. An innocent who stood out from the women he usually mixed with. But she looked incredible. Having slipped the coat from her shoulders, he saw the filmy dress, which hinted at the firm flesh which lay beneath, and in those spike-heeled shoes... He swallowed. Didn’t her calves look ripe for stroking and her ankles made for wrapping around a man’s neck?

‘I like them very much,’ he said unevenly. ‘In fact, there’s a term which is commonly used to describe shoes like those but I don’t think that now is the right time to introduce it into the conversation.’

Predictably, she blushed and Drakon felt a powerful beat of lust, which made him wonder why he’d arranged to meet her here, in one of the most public venues in the city, rather than exploiting the intimacy of his nearby apartment. You know why, he thought grimly. Because she had firmly stated that they weren’t going to have sex until they were married and he was in no doubt that she meant it. Just as he was aware that he was in part responsible for her old-fashioned stance.

He frowned. He’d thought he’d tantalise her by offering her a separate room, thinking that interludes of pleasure would keep her on her toes. More than that, he liked his own space and was used to it because he’d never shared a bedroom full-time with a woman before. He’d thought he would use the opportunity for some extended personal space before things changed once they were married.

Yet Lucy had neatly turned the tables on him by telling him she thought they should wait until after the wedding before being intimate again. He sighed with frustration and anticipation—tinged with a grudging sense of admiration, because he couldn’t think of another woman who would have refused to have sex with him.

And if that was the way she wanted to play it, why not go along with it? He had chosen her because of her pliability but the fact that she was now showing some token resistance made this arranged marriage of theirs seem a little less predictable. In a way, it amused him to let Lucy Phillips think she was calling the shots, because he could have broken her self-imposed sexual embargo any time he wanted. He knew that and he suspected she knew it, too.

The pupils of her eyes were huge and dark and he could sense the sudden tension in her body as she met his gaze, as if silently acknowledging the inexplicable chemistry which was sparking between them. He’d never seen her looking so sleek and so sexy. He’d never imagined she would scrub up this well. The tremble of her lips kick-started something indefinable inside him and a lump rose in his throat. Drakon swallowed, certain that if he reached out to whisper his fingertips over the pulse which fluttered so wildly at the base of her neck, or snaked his hand around her impossibly slender waist, she would do the predictable thing, and melt against him with a hunger which matched his.

But leaving aside the fact they were in a public space, it would be wrong to act on hormonal impulse. He would use restraint because this was too important a deal to jeopardise with sexual impatience. And if he was being honest, wasn’t it turning him on to an unbearable pitch at the thought of being made to wait—he who’d never had to wait for a woman in his life? True, she might be playing games with him—possibly in an attempt to make him fall in love with her—but that certainly wasn’t going to give him any sleepless nights. She would soon discover he was immune to the ruses women employed and was not in the market for ‘love’. All he cared about was that Lucy Phillips was going to make the perfect mother to his adopted son and the exquisite sharpening of his sexual appetite in the meantime was simply a bonus.

Touching his fingers to her back, he guided her towards the Garden Room restaurant. ‘Come on. Let’s go and have lunch.’

They walked along a long corridor, where golden baubles and scarlet ribbons were woven into the seasonal greenery which festooned the walls, and he watched as she looked around and drank it all in.

‘What an amazing hotel,’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s enormous!’

‘You’ve never been here before?’

‘Funny you should say that, but no,’ she answered, dead-pan. ‘Five-star hotels aren’t my usual stomping ground on one of my rare visits to the capital. I’ve seen photos of it, obviously.’

‘I thought we could get married here,’ he offered casually.

‘Here?’ she said, coming to an abrupt halt just before they reached the restaurant entrance and nearly losing her balance on the spike-heeled shoes.

‘You really don’t like surprises, do you?’ He put out an arm to steady her. ‘Why shouldn’t we? It’s a very famous wedding venue.’

‘I know it is! Don’t film stars and princes choose it for their nuptials?’

‘I don’t keep tabs on celebrity weddings unless I happen to be a guest at them,’ he drawled. ‘But Zac Constantinides, the owner, is a friend of mine, so he’s given us a date when it was supposed to be shut. As a favour, you understand.’

‘Of course,’ she said faintly.

‘It’s a perfect solution, especially this close to Christmas. So what do you say, Lucy? Apparently, there’s an in-house wedding planner who’ll do most of the donkey work for you.’

Lucy registered his puzzled expression as she hesitated. Was he expecting her to gush her thanks, or swoon about the sumptuousness of the venue, instead of standing there chewing her lip in a state of nervous anxiety? But she was having difficulty getting her head round the idea of someone like her standing up in a place this grand and making her wedding vows.

But what was the alternative? Surely she could overcome her nerves enough to get married in one of the world’s most glamorous venues—especially if she was marrying such a high-profile man. And wouldn’t the wedding co-ordinator take away some of the stress?

‘You had something else in mind?’ he prompted, when still she said nothing.

Lucy shook her head. ‘You don’t mind the fact that it will be a very public wedding?’

‘You think I want to hide the fact away? I’m Greek, Lucy,’ he said simply. ‘And we Greeks like a good party.’

‘Okay,’ she said, speaking as quietly as possible in order to eliminate any telltale tremble of nerves. ‘In that case—why not?’

‘Not the most rapturous reaction I might have hoped for,’ he observed drily. ‘But I suppose it will have to do. Come on. Let’s eat.’

The maître d’ greeted him with easy familiarity as he showed them to a table which offered a perfect view of the winter garden, with its icy fountain and dark red branches of dogwood.

‘Are we celebrating anything in particular today, Mr Konstantinou?’

‘We certainly are. Ask the sommelier to bring my fiancée a glass of Dom Perignon rosé, would you, please, Carlos?’

There was a split-second pause and, when he spoke, Carlos’s voice sounded faintly strangulated. ‘Certainly, sir. And for yourself?’

‘Just water, thanks.’

Lucy waited until they were alone before she spoke. ‘That man looked as if he’d just been hit by a sledgehammer when you described me as your fiancée.’

‘He was probably surprised, neh. I have a reputation which precedes me.’

‘What kind of reputation?’

He gave a wolfish smile. ‘As a man who has never wanted to settle down. A man who was fundamentally opposed to marriage. Maybe I was unconsciously drawing a line in the sand, to demonstrate that, from now on, things are going to be very different.’

Were they? Lucy wondered distractedly. But how different? A glass of champagne was placed in front of her but she stared uninterestedly at the fizzing pink bubbles before lifting her eyes to Drakon. ‘I suppose you’ve brought loads of women to this hotel in the past? Probably to have lunch in this very restaurant before taking them to bed?’

His black gaze was very steady. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Lucy. I was never promiscuous or indiscriminate but I’m thirty-one, single and, yes, of course I’ve slept with women during that time. Why wouldn’t I? The evidence is everywhere if you care to look for it—because you can find out pretty much anything online.’ He leaned forward, across the starched linen of the tablecloth. ‘But I’m hoping you won’t bother because I’m being perfectly transparent with you. I see no point in pretending to you, or rewriting history. You may have been a virgin when we hooked up, but I most certainly was not.’

‘So why announce our engagement to someone you don’t really know? Was that really necessary?’

‘I think so. Carlos is perfectly aware how these things work.’ He gave a flicker of a smile. ‘He’ll mention it to someone, who’ll mention it to someone else. The press will get to hear about it and there will be a diary piece—only by then it will be old news.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Like I said, it draws a line in the sand and discourages any hopeful overtures from ex-lovers.’

His statement was more matter-of-fact than arrogant and Lucy told herself it shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did, and she was taken aback by the hot flash of jealousy which pulsed through her. But of course he would have plenty of exes eager to return into his life. Hadn’t she been pretty keen to see him herself when she’d returned from Prasinisos, forever glancing at her mobile phone and wondering if he would ring? Which, of course, he hadn’t.

And that was what she needed to remember. The one fact which should never be far from her mind. That she would never have seen Drakon Konstantinou again if his brother and sister-in-law hadn’t decided to go on a narcotic-fuelled bender and leave their baby son with no parents.

‘Did Xander have any other relatives?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Apart from his mother?’

He shook his head. ‘I put an investigator on the case. Niko’s wife was adopted as a baby, but had been estranged from her family for many years. There were no living blood relatives, so Xander will have no connection with the past.’ His expression grew shuttered. ‘And it will be better for him in the long run. Much better.’

‘In your opinion.’

‘It’s my opinion which counts,’ he said cuttingly. ‘And what I say goes. And I’d rather my adoptive son wasn’t in the grip of people I don’t know. People who might influence him to follow the same sorry path as his parents.’

Feeling faint, Lucy gripped the stem of her champagne flute, but she didn’t lift it to her lips. She was afraid that her hands would tremble too much and she would spill it all over the perfectly starched tablecloth. Because it wasn’t just the things Drakon had said which freaked her out, but the way he’d said them. He’d sounded so... ruthless. As if you could take the parts of somebody’s life which you didn’t like and simply wipe them out—like airbrushing a photo or altering something on your camera phone. But if he’d sounded ruthless it was because he was, she reminded herself. She should forget that at her peril. Suddenly she was glad that she was going to be there for baby Xander. Glad she would be able to fight his corner, because surely he needed someone there for him when Drakon started being even more high-handed than usual.

Eventually she felt calm enough to take a sip of wine, which eased some of her tension, and beneath the table she stretched out her legs, her new pointy shoes touching what she thought was the leg of the table, but Drakon’s mocking eyes informed her that she’d made direct contact with his calf. Hastily, she jerked her foot away and his gaze grew more thoughtful.

‘So why don’t you like surprises?’ he asked suddenly.

It was a question she hadn’t been expecting, and if she hadn’t been so blindsided by everything which had happened in the last twenty-four hours Lucy might have glossed over it—because why revisit pain when you didn’t have to? But Drakon seemed to have an uncanny knack of getting her to open up. He’d done it on the night of the school reunion and he was doing it again now. She wondered if it was because he’d known her so long ago, in those days when she’d had a mother and a brother and hadn’t been such a lost soul. And surely if they were planning on spending the rest of their lives together, he needed to know some of the things which made her tick. Only some of them, mind. A twist of guilt seared her heart and she stared down at her fingernails before looking up to meet the searching gleam of his eyes. ‘I guess I just associate surprises with unpleasant things.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Oh, you know.’ She shrugged her shoulders restlessly. ‘All the stuff which comes with having family in the military. The heavy knock at the door, or the ring of the telephone late at night. The men in uniform who stand on your doorstep with grim faces as they prepare to give you the news.’ News which rocked the foundations of your world and made you realise nothing was ever going to be the same again. Yet hadn’t it been those experiences that had provided the lessons which had enabled Lucy to ring-fence her emotions and keep herself safe from pain? Which had forced her to build barriers around her heart so she could never be hurt like that again? She folded her lips together. Wasn’t that one of the good things about agreeing to marry a man like Drakon—that he had spelt out he didn’t do love either? He had his own emotional barriers in place and that made them equal in a totally unexpected way. He could never hurt her because she would never let him get that close.

And the bottom line was that he didn’t want to get close.

‘That must have been tough,’ he observed.

‘Life is tough, Drakon—as I’m sure Xander would tell us if he were able to speak.’

He nodded, his eyes still searching her face, as if he was seeing something he hadn’t noticed before. ‘I don’t want any more children,’ he said suddenly.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘More kids.’ His voice was rough. ‘One is my limit and if you want more—’

‘I don’t,’ she said quickly, as relief washed over her. ‘I think children should only ever be conceived in love and we’ve both agreed that isn’t what is driving this marriage of ours.’

His nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing. ‘There’s something else we haven’t addressed,’ he said softly.

Her brow creased. ‘Which is?’

‘The ring.’

‘The ring?’ she repeated.

‘An engagement ring. It’s fairly traditional in most cultures, as far as I’m aware. Surely you must have been expecting one, Lucy? I thought all women had preferences about what kind of jewels they’d like in this situation.’

‘No, Drakon, all women do not—at least, not those of us who live relatively normal lives. I have better things to do with my time than drool about diamonds.’ Recklessly, she took another mouthful of champagne—a much bigger one this time—which really went to her head. Serves you right, she thought dazedly as she carefully replaced the glass on the table. ‘I’m astonished you didn’t ask your partner, Amy, to select one for me as she did my clothes,’ she said, in an acid tone she’d never heard herself use before. ‘Or maybe she already has?’

He shook his head. ‘The answer is no on both counts. She couldn’t have done even if I wanted her to because she’s flown out to Singapore on business.’

‘Gosh. How will you be able to manage without her?’ she questioned, the lingering effects of the wine still evident in her unusually flippant tone.

‘Amy’s absence certainly makes me realise how hard she works.’ Almost carelessly, he slid a small box across the table. ‘I bought this for you myself, so if you don’t like it you’re at liberty to change it.’ As Lucy continued to stare at it, he lowered his voice into a murmured command. ‘Stop looking at it as though it were an unexploded bomb. Open it.’

With faltering fingers she did just that, and it was a measure of just how glitzy the world in which she now found herself that Lucy realised she was expecting to see a whacking great diamond, or an emerald the size of a gull’s egg. Because wasn’t that what billionaires usually bought for their future brides, especially if it was an arranged marriage? Some huge chunk of glittering gemstone which would be way too big for her finger and look like paste on someone so unremittingly ordinary.

But as she flipped open the box to reveal a ring, it was to discover that Drakon had surprised her and in a way she almost wished he hadn’t, because it made her feel quite breathless. Set in embellished gold was a square-cut sapphire the indefinable colour of a spot of ink dropped into a beaker of water, which glittered in the pale winter light that streamed in through the windows. It was delicate, unusual and beautiful. The most beautiful ring she had ever seen.

‘What made you choose this?’ she questioned shakily.

He shrugged. ‘The jeweller asked me what colour your eyes were.’

Lucy’s heart raced and a strange, restrictive dryness in her throat made it difficult for her to speak as for one split second she allowed herself to sink into a fantasy of longing. ‘And you remembered?’

‘It’s hardly neuroscience, Lucy. I only saw you a couple of days ago.’ His slightly impatient look was followed by a dismissive shake of his head as he picked up his menu. ‘Come on. Let’s order. I have a meeting this afternoon.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.